Dinah, ClinkShrink, & Roy produce Shrink Rap: a blog by Psychiatrists for Psychiatrists, interested bystanders are also welcome. A place to talk; no one has to listen.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Holiday Cards

So Fat Doctor posted about writing her holiday cards. I feel like she's my friend....it's the strangest thing, but I track this person's life. I know when her sister had bladder surgery, when she painted her toenails blue, and how did she lose 8 pounds in one week??? I wonder what state she lives in (not to mention how she works on the same medical unit as her mother). Son, husband, sister, big dog, little dog, it's like Reality Blogger.

Holiday Cards: growing up, my family never sent them. I grew up (I think) and started sending them, including pics after we had kids. I learned to paste in photos, and while I'm not much for newsy letters, I've moved from "our year in review in pictures" to a few travel photos and a sentence about each family member. Some years it's simply "the kids have too many activities to list." Mostly, I keep it short and sweet, and I don't mention the more troublesome aspects of life: there are always a few. If you know me, you hear them, if our relationship is sustained only by the yearly holiday card, I leave out the bad stuff. On the receiving end, we've gotten some really interesting ones. Last year was the first time we learned someone's ejection fraction from their holiday newsletter. One friend sent a month-by-month, 2 page, single-spaced account of every kiddy performance and academic conference.

Fat Doctor and I exchanged e-cards off blog (-- I think this is called "back door"). She has a name (only a first name)! I was shocked, I've wondered what state she lives in, how fat she really is, and my husband has wondered if she really exists, but it never occurred to me that she'd have any name but "Fat Doctor" or FD. It was like a bubble bursting, and while it's a nice name, it was a little bit disappointing, like seeing your favorite glamorous movie star without their makeup. The newsletter itself was full-form Fat Doctor, I loved it. Gorgeous, gorgeous little boy -- he's made brief appearances on the blog, so an old familiar face-- and much of the news I knew. Up there with writing about one's ejection fraction, Fat Doctor sends advance directives for both herself and Husband. He wants his life sustained as long as he can operate the TV remote. This reminds me of Roy, who once said he wanted to be kept alive as long as he could move a cursor by any means. I wonder if Roy puts that in his holiday notes? For the record, and this did not make my holiday card: If I am unable to consent, I am never to be put on a salt-free, diabetic diet. I mean that.

Are you asking, what's this got to do with Psychiatry?? We didn't get very many comments on our anti-depressants and suicide posts, timely stuff that it is; I figured I'd digress to pleasanter topics for a few moments. Maybe Roy will fill us in on the FDA hearings.

7 comments:

Well, above I referred to the fact that these statistic-filled posts are a bit intimidating, I assume, to your lay readers. They certainly are for me. It isn't that we're not interested.

I am particularly interested because I have been suicidal off and on since the age of 17 and since even as a little kid I remember praying to God that I would die in my sleep (maybe that's normal for little Catholic children who have been taught that heaven is so great)?

Anyway, about FD...I can't think of another blogger that I love. It sounds weird but how can you NOT love FD?

She is a good doctor (remember the post on the LOL (little old lady) that she kissed? She is cheery and hard working and obviously loves son and husband with all of her heart.

She definitely would be a good friend because she would always have your back.

We are all richer for having her in our lives, even just on the blog scale.

For the record,I too have always left out the negative. This year, I decided the negative was such a huge part of our year that I had to put it in, but I tried not to be whiny at all. Just the facts, ma'am.

My brother-in-law writes the family letter for my sister's family. He always includes an update as to how many pounds are in their family bed (most nights the kids and dogs end up with them). At the max, it was over 800! I always think that's a hoot. Their 150 pound Akita died this year, so I expect the weight to be down considerably.

Miss Molly: Thanks for the lovely comments. I, too, feel like I 'know people' from their blogs. It's all good! Some people I like more and more, some less and less. :)

Molly- What's wrong with 'Roy'? (jk)Sorry for the intimidation, but keep in mind our target audience is other docs... but feel free to hang out and ask questions.

ClinPsych has a good post on this area, with some good links to digestible info on Odds Ratios and such.

And I do love to read Fat Doctor... you are a good soul. We used to have a 120-lb Great Pyrenees whose favorite thing to do was hop up on the bed and lay on my legs while I tried to sleep. I know it was a bad thing to do, alpha dogs and such, but it became one of my favorite, as well.

Umm, I'm here. Thanks for inviting me. Do I need to lay on the couch while I read your blog? Thanks for stopping by and commenting on Addicted to Medblogs. Now that y'all are listed on the Kevin.md feeds, do you try to come up with more provocative titles to your posts? Because I fell for the one about sex with fish. I am a big fan of FD too, although being a shy lurker, I have never left a comment. Enjoyed your post, although I have to say, it's the only one I understood, other than the Christmas meme post.